Uber Faces Tax Authorities In Quebec, Two Offices Raided

Uber has recently been under the spotlight of several governmental entities, mainly because of how the company operates, and how they manage to keep such low prices when compared to the usual taxi fares. The private car service has, in the past, avoided several legal accusations regarding tax activity, the legitimacy of their business, and even stolen trade secrets; but it seems that today is not one of those days. Uber is facing more serious actions from part of Quebec's tax authorities in Canada, which have already raided two of Uber's offices in Montreal. Uber is known for being a better and safer alternative to cabs, and has grown exponentially ever since the service was launched on 2009 in San Francisco, California; and now that unnatural growth has caused several governments to become dubious of the private car service company.

Last week on Thursday, tax authorities in Quebec, Canada sent around 20 investigators to a pair of Uber's offices, the investigators were looking for documents in which the company had information about its taxes. According to Stephane Dion, Member of the Canadian House of Commons, Quebec's administrative entities have lead investigations for several months now. Today, the investigators are back to yet another of Uber's offices in Canada; the goal of said tax investigators is to gather as much information as possible to later analyze it. Uber's Spokeswoman,Susie Health, said the company remains optimistic, and is completely willing to cooperate with Canada's government in the hopes of resolving all tax-related issues. It is unclear when these investigations will cease, but Revenu Quebec (the entity responsible for applying tax laws), stated that if found guilty of any of the charges, the people responsible for Uber would possibly face hefty fines and even prison sentences up to five years.

The main reason for Uber being targeted by numerous governments across the world, is that the UberX service, relies on private cars that don't require a taxi licence to operate. This same issue, has already caused the service to be banned in Germany; and cause major struggles in countries like Spain and the United States, where hundreds of taxi drivers are participating on strikes against the service for being competitively unfair. Ultimately, Uber's faith is still unknown, as even with the mentioned problems, the company is still operating in a regular manner, in a lot of cities around the whole world.